


Battle for the Soul of the Poet: A Romance

by leoba



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Graduate Student Rey, Medieval manuscript research, NOT A STUDENT/TEACHER FIC, Professor Ben Solo, academic au, statera trium verse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-09-02 06:14:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16781260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leoba/pseuds/leoba
Summary: Graduate Student Rey Niima is going to write her dissertation onBattle for the Soul of the Poet, an obscure epic poem that exists in one manuscript at the British Library. While doing her initial research there she meets Professor Ben Solo, the world's authority on the poem, and he eventually agrees to serve as the outside reader on her dissertation. Over the next four years Rey will study theBattlemanuscript, with the support of Professor Solo, and will begin to uncover the mystery of its creation.





	Battle for the Soul of the Poet: A Romance

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Statera Trium](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15366297) by [flypaper_brain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flypaper_brain/pseuds/flypaper_brain), [leoba](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leoba/pseuds/leoba), [LoveThemFiercely](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoveThemFiercely/pseuds/LoveThemFiercely). 



> This is a thing I've had bouncing around in my head for a while. I wrote most of this chapter back in the summer, but I've decided if I want it to see the light of day the best thing to do is to go ahead and start posting. I intend to finish this eventually (it won't be too long - less than ten chapters) but this is low on my list so, fair warning, it won't update regularly.

"I'm sorry, Miss Niima, someone else has already claimed this manuscript."

It's 10:30am on Wednesday and Rey drags her eyes away from the wide skylights that bathe the British Library's Manuscripts Reading Room in a soft light to stare at the library assistant.

"Excuse me?" Her heartbeat speeds up and her breath is coming faster too. She's already stressed out just being here, and now she's not going to get to look at the only thing that could have ever got her to return to London? Fantastic.

"Yes, I'm afraid that the manuscript is already in use today. You can wait to see if it's returned, or you can come back tomorrow."

Tears prick in the corner of her eyes. Pull yourself together, Niima. Focus. She only has two days, and if she isn't able to spend at least a couple of hours with this manuscript she is screwed. 

Arguing with the assistant will get her nowhere, so she opts to buy time. There's one other manuscript she needs to see, so she gives the assistant its shelfmark and in moments her request is off to the shelving staff.

As she waits for the book she turns around to appraise the room, and to see if she can figure out who has her book. In the end it's not that difficult, this close to opening time the room is sparsely populated and there's only one person sitting in the first row of desks - the row reserved, she knows from the tutorial provided to her by her graduate advisor, Professor Luke Skywalker in the Department of English at Harvard, for those people working with the most precious manuscripts. 

It's sitting right there, not ten feet away: the only surviving copy of _Battle for the Soul of the Poet_ , the obscure, rarely-studied medieval allegory of The Poet, who battles a series of demons with the assistance of The Angel and The Warrior. Those characters are usually interpreted as representing the forgiveness of God and the vengeance of God, but it's such a strange story that authorial intention is really not clear.

Even from across the room, Rey can see that the book is opened to folio 21 recto. That’s the first page of chapter six, The Plight of Dawn, which starts with a fantastic miniature showing the heroes as they prepare to fight against The Demon Who Comes With The Sun. Rey's heart constricts; the first time she saw this book, fifteen years ago or more, that was the image she saw, and that experience had changed the trajectory of her life in ways she is still coming to terms with. She loves that book. She needs it.

The person sitting with her book is a man, a large man. He's obviously tall, his back is broad as he leans over the manuscript, large fingers caressing the corner of the page in the moment before he turns it. She catches his profile and takes in his long nose, glasses, and notes that his lips are moving slightly. He's reading it, she realizes, and she's filled with sudden rage. If this man wants to read it he can go online and read those damn digital images like everyone else. She doesn't want to read it, she needs to look at the book - how the leaves are grouped into quires, how the whole thing is put together, and she can't do that from what's on the computer. She needs this book, and here's this man reading it. She seethes.

The other book arrives and the assistant directs her to the second row of desks. She notes that the desk directly across from her manuscript is available, so she slips in there and the assistant helps her set up the foam supports and supplies her with a handful of snakes in case she needs to hold the edges of the book down. She's concentrated on the book in her hand as they remove it from its box and lay it out, but once that's done she's able to get a better look at the man sitting across from her. 

Rey can't tell how old he is - anywhere between 25 and 40. So he could be another graduate student, or he could be a professor. He's wearing a black sweater, and it looks expensive, but that doesn't really help; she knows a number of graduate students with parents who are more than willing to buy them expensive clothes. She spares only a moment to think of her own clothes - a green t shirt, jeans, sneakers - they're new, but they're from WalMart. She imagines Dr. Has My Manuscript has probably never set a foot in WalMart in his life. In addition to his clothes he has really nice hair, which she only notices because he runs a hand through it, his eyebrows pulling together as though he's reached a particularly complicated passage.

He shows absolutely no indication that he has noticed her at all.

Rey sighs and contemplates the book in front of her, which is roughly the same size and shape as the _Battle_ manuscript. She may as well do her secondary research while she waits.

* * *

About an hour later, the man across from her closes her manuscript and carries it to the desk. Leaving his jacket and books at his workstation, he heads right out the Reading Room door.

Rey is up like a shot, carrying the other manuscript to the desk. “Did he return it?” She asks breathlessly. “Can I see it now?”

The assistant gazes at Rey over her glasses. “He did not,” she replies. “He said he would be back in about fifteen minutes. Needs a breath of fresh air, I expect.”

Rey’s out the door then herself. He could have gone to the restroom, but he could also be heading down for a snack at the cafe, or for a cup of coffee at the booth in the lobby. Lucky for her the building is so open; peering down the stairs, she can see the man stepping off the stairs onto the ground floor. He appears to be heading to the lobby, so she sprints down after him, trying not to knock into people coming up the stairs on her way down.

When she reaches the lobby he’s there, in the line for coffee, so she steps behind him and clears her throat. He sighs and looks down at her, and it’s then that she realizes he really is looking _down_ at her; she’s tall, for a woman, but he’s tall for a man and as she’d noticed upstairs he’s _big_ , which probably makes him seem even taller. He glances at her face, then appraises the rest of her, and she’s suddenly aware of how she must appear to him. Cheap clothes. Out of breath from running down the stairs. A bit wild, maybe. No matter - she can’t control what he thinks of her.

She takes a breath and puts out her hand. “Rey Niima, graduate student in English at Harvard. I saw you working in the Reading Room and I wanted to introduce myself.”

The man stares at her, then at her hand, and the very corner of his mouth quirks up as he gives her a firm handshake. “Pleasure to meet you, Rey Niima.” He’s American, she should have guessed, and his voice is deep and not quite as loud as she expected it to be. “What’s your interest in _Battle_?”

Rey’s thrown off, just a bit. “Oh. Was I that obvious?”

Having reached the front of the line, the man makes his order. “Two shots of espresso with cream, and whatever she’s having.” He gestures to Rey, and she’s so thrown off guard that she automatically answers with her usual. “Whole milk latte, please.” He pays for their coffees with a 20 pound note, not taking his eyes off her the whole time. It's a little unnerving.

“My dissertation is going to be on the _Battle_ manuscript,” she explains, “and I got a small grant to come here for two days to look at it. So you see, I really need to see it, today and tomorrow. Or my whole trip will be wasted. My grant will be wasted.”

The man presses his lips together as he hands her her coffee, and then makes his way to the one empty table without looking to see if she's following him. She does follow him, grabbing a couple of sugar packets on the way.

He sits in one of the small, uncomfortable looking plastic chairs, crosses his legs, leans back and takes a sip from his cup. “You say you're at Harvard.”

Rey nods as she stirs sugar into her coffee.

“You study with Skywalker?”

She nods again. “You know Professor Skywalker?”

He laughs somewhat mirthlessly and takes another sip of his own drink. “Everybody knows Skywalker. He only has the best students.” It sounds like a compliment, but there's something in the tone of his voice that implies it is not, so she chooses not to respond.

He looks at her appraisingly for another moment, then uncrosses his legs, leans forward and sets his cup on the table. “Why do you need to see this manuscript so badly, Rey Niima? Why can't you just look at the digital images like everybody else?”

He’s challenging her, and there's nothing Rey likes more than a challenge. She rises to it. “I've read the text, I've been analyzing the paleography from the digital images and let's just say that I think I've found something new, something no one else has noticed. But the analysis is dependent on the physical structure of the book, which as I'm sure you know is difficult if not impossible to determine from what’s available online.” 

He looks interested, now. Almost too interested. She offers him a closed-mouth smile and takes a loud slurp of her latte.

He sighs and smiles himself. He has a nice smile. “You're not going to tell me.”

She laughs out loud at that. “Are you serious? I've heard the horror stories, professors who've run out of original ideas stealing from students and publishing their work as their own. Like hell am I telling some mysterious stranger a damn thing about the details of my research.”

As she's been talking his expression has morphed. Still amused, but combined with some kind of understanding. “You don't know who I am,” he says, and she almost spits out the coffee in her mouth.

“I do not. I've never seen you before in my life. Should I? What, are you like, Ben Solo or something?” She chuckles into her cup, amused at the thought that this young man could possibly be the world's authority on _Battle for the Soul_ , author of _the_ book on the subject and many articles besides, and estranged nephew of her own advisor. She's heard so many stories about that man since she started her research, none of it good aside from the scholarship. The scholarship was exciting and impeccable.

The man sets down his cup, leans back again, laces his hands together behind his head, and looks at her. 

He looks at her and she looks at him and as realization hits her she can feel the blood rushing to her cheeks. She thinks, perhaps, she has never been more embarrassed in her entire life. “You are Ben Solo, aren't you.” 

He laughs, not unkindly. “The pleasure's all mine, believe me.”

Rey squares her shoulders. “I'm still not gonna tell you.”

He shakes his head and sits up. “No, that's smart. Not,” he emphasizes, “because I'm going to steal your idea, because I wouldn't do that. I've had that done to me and it's unpleasant. But because it's good practice.”

Rey must admit that of all the things she's ever heard about Ben Solo, stealing other people's work is not one of them. He is supposed to be angry and temperamental, though, difficult to work with, and very protective of his own ideas. A good teacher, though. She met one of his students from Yale at a graduate student conference back in the Spring, and she’d praised his instructing, if not his personality. He seems fine to Rey, though, so far. Maybe he’s attending anger management classes or something.

While she’s been thinking it appears that he’s decided to change the subject. “So, what got you interested in _Battle_?” He continues. “It’s a little obscure.” 

She could lie; she wants to lie. She always does, when people ask her this question. She read about it in a book, or Luke told her about it, or something like that. Lying’s easy. But there’s something… about him, or being so close to the book, or just being in this building again after so long, that makes her want to tell the truth. This stranger, he is a stranger, she wants to tell him what is, essentially, her darkest secret. So Rey steadies herself with the last sip of her latte and tells him.

"I was really young, like eight or nine. I'd run away from my foster home in North London the day before, and had somehow made my way to Euston Station. Just down the street from here." She hears him gasp, but pushes forward. "I walked up the sidewalk and I saw the British Library, although I didn’t know what it was. It just... looked interesting, I guess, so I walked in. They must have thought I was with the adults who were around me, I don't know. I'm sure I was a mess, my foster parents didn’t take great care of me.” She cleared her throat, her eyes focused on her coffee cup. “Anyway, I followed the crowd into the main gallery, and the _Battle_ manuscript was on display. It was open to the first page of chapter six, the same page you were looking at when I first saw you this morning."

"I just... it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen in my life. I loved the Angel especially, like she was there to fight for me. The idea that someone would support me at all was totally foreign to me. I thought the writing was cool, even though I couldn't read it. It just looked neat, you know? But most of all I just loved the book. It looked so solid, and the label in the case said the covers were made of wood, and that it had three hundred leaves that were made of sheepskin. Three hundred sheep! To make one book!” 

She glanced up at him and he was watching her, his face still, eyes unfathomable. She looked back at her cup. “Of course I know now it was more like one hundred and fifty sheep, but anyway. I stood in that gallery, I was dirty and my shoes were falling apart, I specifically remember that, but I could imagine the forest and the flock of sheep, it was so peaceful, and then I thought about the people who wrote and colored the book, this book about these supernatural beings who would fight for me, against the world. I wanted the book then, wanted it more than anything, and all I could do was lean against the case and cry.”

Hot tears are forming in her eyes, they always do when she thinks about this, _why_ did she think it was a good idea to tell him this? She can’t even look at him now. “Eventually someone from the gallery carried me into an office and called the authorities, and I was moved to another foster home. I haven't been back to the British Library, before today, but I've never forgotten that book, and how it made me feel. And that’s how I got interested in it."

She looks up at him, and he's staring at her, face pale. He looks as though he's seen a ghost. 

“Sorry for the sob story,” she says apologetically. 

Silent, his eyes move over her face, and he has to clear his throat before he can speak. "That... that's really intense, Rey. And it’s fine. We all have our own stories. Maybe someday I’ll tell you mine." He stands up and picks up both of their cups from the table. “Until then, let’s go up and get you a look at that manuscript.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Reading_ a manuscript like that? Nobody does that. That's nuts. That's how good Ben Solo is. He's so good, y'all.
> 
> Although Luke apparently gave Rey an orientation to working in the BL he didn't tell he that it's terribly bad form to speak with other people who are working there unless you already know them; huge faux pas. Ben appears to be quite charmed by this.
> 
> Relatedly, Rey doesn't know enough to know how to talk to "famous" people in her field. It could go two ways: She could be completely afraid and run away, or she could just be herself. She's Rey, so she's herself. If any of her fellow students saw her talking to Ben Solo like that they'd be horrified. (Spoiler: this is one of the things he likes about her immediately.)
> 
> Thanks for reading!

**Author's Note:**

>  _Battle for the Soul of the Poet: A Romance_ isn't exactly a student/teacher AU. Rey is a student, and Ben is a professor, but even though she's not his student they will eventually be in a professional relationship together. He'll be an outside reader on her dissertation, which means he'll be reading the diss as she writes it, advising her on how to improve her research; it can be quite an involved and close relationship, as close as a student would be with any other member of a committee, and a very unequal one. Dissertation committee members have a lot of power over the students they read for. As in real life, romantic entanglements between them could destroy her reputation. (Probably not his! Which sucks!) So this is a slow burn of the highest order. Because, it's Reylo, and they love each other pretty much immediately (I mean, I'm giving it the subtitle for a reason!). So that's something they will need to deal with. I'm planning a lot of nerding out about manuscripts, and a lot of angst. But don't worry, I promise there will be a Happily Ever After. It's just going to take a while.
> 
> This story takes place in the same universe as _[Statera Trium](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15366297/chapters/35656308)_ and _[Cephalopods& Caffeine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15970064/chapters/37249886)_, so if you've read either of those you'll have an inkling about what's going on with the manuscript, but this story doesn't require any knowledge of them.
> 
> Also: YES, the title is a direct reference to the title of A. S. Byatt's fantastic _Possession: A Romance_ , although the plots of these stories have nothing to do with one another.
> 
> I'm leofgyth on Tumblr, come talk to me about medieval manuscripts!


End file.
